Part 14 (1/2)

He told us many things that day, for he could speak the Cree tongue, and my father listened, and listened, and when at last they left us, my father said for him to come and sit within the tepee again.

He came, all the time he came, and my father welcomed him, but my mother always sat in silence at work with the quills; my mother never liked the Great ”Blackcoat.”

His stories fascinated me. I used to listen intently to the tale of the strange new place he called ”heaven,” of the gold crown, of the white dress, of the great music; and then he would tell of that other strange place--h.e.l.l. My father and I hated it; we feared it, we dreamt of it, we trembled at it. Oh, if the ”Blackcoat” would only cease to talk of it! Now I know he saw its effect upon us, and he used it as a whip to lash us into his new religion, but even then my mother must have known, for each time he left the tepee she would watch him going slowly away across the prairie; then when he was disappearing into the far horizon she would laugh scornfully, and say:

”If the white man made this Blackcoat's h.e.l.l, let him go to it. It is for the man who found it first. No h.e.l.l for Indians, just Happy Hunting Grounds. Blackcoat can't scare me.”

And then, after weeks had pa.s.sed, one day as he stood at the tepee door he laid his white, old hand on my head and said to my father: ”Give me this little girl, chief. Let me take her to the mission school; let me keep her, and teach her of the great G.o.d and His eternal heaven. She will grow to be a n.o.ble woman, and return perhaps to bring her people to the Christ.”

My mother's eyes snapped. ”No,” she said. It was the first word she ever spoke to the ”Blackcoat.” My father sat and smoked. At the end of a half-hour he said:

”I am an old man, Blackcoat. I shall not leave the G.o.d of my fathers.

I like not your strange G.o.d's ways--all of them. I like not His two new places for me when I am dead. Take the child, Blackcoat, and save her from h.e.l.l.”

The first grief of my life was when we reached the mission. They took my buckskin dress off, saying I was now a little Christian girl and must dress like all the white people at the mission. Oh, how I hated that stiff new calico dress and those leather shoes. But, little as I was, I said nothing, only thought of the time when I should be grown, and do as my mother did, and wear the buckskins and the blanket.

My next serious grief was when I began to speak the English, that they forbade me to use any Cree words whatever. The rule of the school was that any child heard using its native tongue must get a slight punishment. I never understood it, I cannot understand it now, why the use of my dear Cree tongue could be a matter for correction or an action deserving punishment.

She was strict, the matron of the school, but only justly so, for she had a heart and a face like her brother's, the ”Blackcoat.”

I had long since ceased to call him that. The trappers at the post called him ”St. Paul,” because, they told me, of his self-sacrificing life, his kindly deeds, his rarely beautiful old face; so I, too, called him ”St. Paul,” thought oftener ”Father Paul,” though he never liked the latter t.i.tle, for he was a Protestant. But as I was his pet, his darling of the whole school, he let me speak of him as I would, knowing it was but my heart speaking in love. His sister was a widow, and mother to a laughing yellow-haired boy of about my own age, who was my constant playmate and who taught me much of English in his own childish way. I used to be fond of this child, just as I was fond of his mother and of his uncle, my ”Father Paul,” but as my girlhood pa.s.sed away, as womanhood came upon me, I got strangely wearied of them all; I longed, oh, G.o.d, how I longed for the old wild life! It came with my womanhood, with my years.

What mattered it to me now that they had taught me all their ways?--their tricks of dress, their reading, their writing, their books. What mattered it that ”Father Paul” loved me, that the traders at the post called me pretty, that I was a pet of all, from the factor to the poorest trapper in the service? I wanted my own people, my own old life, my blood called out for it, but they always said I must not return to my father's tepee. I heard them talk amongst themselves of keeping me away from pagan influences; they told each other that if I returned to the prairies, the tepees, I would degenerate, slip back to paganism, as other girls had done; marry, perhaps, with a pagan--and all their years of labor and teaching would be lost.

I said nothing, but I waited. And then one night the feeling overcame me. I was in the Hudson's Bay store when an Indian came in from the north with a large pack of buckskin. As they unrolled it a dash of its insinuating odor filled the store. I went over and leaned above the skins a second, then buried my face in them, swallowing, drinking the fragrance of them, that went to my head like wine. Oh, the wild wonder of that wood-smoked tan, the subtilty of it, the untamed smell of it! I drank it into my lungs, my innermost being was saturated with it, till my mind reeled and my heart seemed twisted with a physical agony. My childhood recollections rushed upon me, devoured me. I left the store in a strange, calm frenzy, and going rapidly to the mission house I confronted my Father Paul and demanded to be allowed to go ”home,”

if only for a day. He received the request with the same refusal and the same gentle sigh that I had so often been greeted with, but this time the desire, the smoke-tan, the heart-ache, never lessened.

Night after night I would steal away by myself and go to the border of the village to watch the sun set in the foothills, to gaze at the far line of sky and prairie, to long and long for my father's lodge.

And Laurence--always Laurence--my fair-haired, laughing, child playmate, would come calling and calling for me: ”Esther, where are you? We miss you; come in, Esther, come in with me.” And if I did not turn at once to him and follow, he would come and place his strong hands on my shoulders and laugh into my eyes and say, ”Truant, truant, Esther; can't _we_ make you happy?”

My old childhood playmate had vanished years ago. He was a tall, slender young man now, handsome as a young chief, but with laughing blue eyes, and always those yellow curls about his temples. He was my solace in my half-exile, my comrade, my brother, until one night it was, ”Esther, Esther, can't _I_ make you happy?”

I did not answer him; only looked out across the plains and thought of the tepees. He came close, close. He locked his arms about me, and with my face pressed up to his throat he stood silent. I felt the blood from my heart sweep to my very finger-tips. I loved him.

O G.o.d, how I loved him! In a wild, blind instant it all came, just because he held me so and was whispering brokenly, ”Don't leave me, don't leave me, Esther; _my_ Esther, my child-love, my playmate, my girl-comrade, my little Cree sweetheart, will you go away to your people, or stay, stay for me, for my arms, as I have you now?”

No more, no more the tepees; no more the wild stretch of prairie, the intoxicating fragrance of the smoke-tanned buckskin; no more the bed of buffalo hide, the soft, silent moccasin; no more the dark faces of my people, the dulcet cadence of the sweet Cree tongue--only this man, this fair, proud, tender man who held me in his arms, in his heart. My soul prayed his great white G.o.d, in that moment, that He would let me have only this. It was twilight when we re-entered the mission gate. We were both excited, feverish. Father Paul was reading evening prayers in the large room beyond the hallway; his soft, saint-like voice stole beyond the doors, like a benediction upon us. I went noiselessly upstairs to my own room and sat there undisturbed for hours.

The clock downstairs struck one, startling me from my dreams of happiness, and at the same moment a flash of light attracted me. My room was in an angle of the building, and my window looked almost directly down into those of Father Paul's study, into which at that instant he was entering, carrying a lamp. ”Why, Laurence,” I heard him exclaim, ”what are you doing here? I thought, my boy, you were in bed hours ago.”

”No, uncle, not in bed, but in dreamland,” replied Laurence, arising from the window, where evidently he, too, had spent the night hours as I had done.

Father Paul fumbled about a moment, found his large black book, which for once he seemed to have got separated from, and was turning to leave, when the curious circ.u.mstance of Laurence being there at so unusual an hour seemed to strike him anew. ”Better go to sleep, my son,” he said simply, then added curiously, ”Has anything occurred to keep you up?”

Then Laurence spoke: ”No, uncle, only--only, I'm happy, that's all.”

Father Paul stood irresolute. Then: ”It is--?”

”Esther,” said Laurence quietly, but he was at the old man's side, his hand was on the bent old shoulder, his eyes proud and appealing.